About Me

Monday, November 29, 2010

A Working Monday In The Life of Me

5:40a.m.
My handphone sings & wakes me up. Since I have to report to the office on the other end of the country on Mondays & Thursdays & it's a freaking Monday morning, it's self-explanatory why I have to get up at this damned hour.

I cannot help being jolted into consciousness while observing myself sliding into Cranky Mode. Oh, the horror.

I hate mornings

Something in me always dies everytime the sun slowly manifests itself in the great blue here in the bloody tropics.

6:56a.m.
Sprinted out of the house & making my way to the train station. Yeah, it takes me that long to prepare for the day, mostly in front of the mirror. I didn't even eat breakfast. I also spent some time talking to my Lioness (a.k.a. my Little Rabbit). Talking to her cheers me up since she can be so funny.

Since I'm in the sales line & am the face representing my company as I have to come face to face with our customers, I have to metro myself up a bit & look modern. That eats up some time in the mornings. Even if I was in another trade, I'd still do the same. Just so happens that I find making myself look good a little to be really fun.

You try to have a bit of fun to cheer yourself up on a dreary Monday morning during the hour when you should still be in bed. Early bird gets the dark rings.

You know what irks me? This place I'm living in is a leading modern Asian country but lots of guys (not all, but lots) don't give a hoot about their appearances or level of modernity. Go figure.

7:22a.m.
I'm in the train right now at Boon Lay and my transit point is Paya Lebar station where I'll be switching to the Circle Line for another train to another station nearest to my office.

But instead of heading straight east, I'm taking the Boon Lay train in the other direction towards the remote Joo Koon station, which is 2 stops away and the final station of the western line. All this merry-go-round just so that I can guarantee a seat for myself on this long journey to the east.

And I do a need a seat today. Usually when I'm in the train or bus, I'd listen to music, play games or read iBooks on my phone. But it's freaking Monday, remember? On Mondays, I'll just listen to music & nap in the train.

"What? I thought you just woke up earlier?", you might say, dear reader, but my weekends are so precious to me that I squeeze every available second out of them for my loved ones, personal hobbies & activities. Last night, I was editing the 3rd part of our Japan trip's video, after which I practiced guitar & some music theory until some time past 2a.m.

And I went to bed with a satisfied smile on my face. Better to go to bed later with a satisfied sense of fulfillment than go to bed early with nothing accomplished.

So the time spent in the train on Monday mornings like this one is used for napping to make up for the previous weekend late night. Besides, this place has become so overpopulated the crowded condition of the morning traffic is a fucking misery, so I might as well nap & shut my eyes from this tragedy.

I fucking hate mornings

So good night. Later...

8:50a.m.
Arrival at the office. Good thing I managed to have coffee at one of the coffeeshops nearby just now. As a result, I'm now feeling more awake & better. On days when I don't wake up early enough, I won't have the time for coffee before coming in & such mornings suck.

No morning caffeine = Corporate Zombie

That's just one of the formulas for dealing with a zombie outbreak: besides shooting them square in the head, you make them drink coffee.

10:13a.m.
So after I've completed my paperwork, checked my work emails, finished some discussions or meetings & stocked up on my order forms for my customers & other nitty gritty stuffs, I'm now leaving the office to head out to the big bad world.

This Monday morning is different:
A number of my fellow colleagues from the Sales division didn't come to the office, which is a rarity. Angela has started her maternity leave, Jace is on sick leave, Dino might be coming in later & I'm not sure about Lily & Eileen. Only Ken, me & Zell made it. Hey, I just realized that all the guys are in & the girls are not.

Anyway, without the rest of them around, the office has become sombre & boring. Every working adult knows that the Sales division is the life of the party. It's an undisputed law of the Universe. But when I reached the train station, Dino WhatsApped me & we chatted while I made my way to my customers. I even get to hear some of her voice recordings she sent me via WhatsApp. How cute.

4:19a.m.
I woke up & realized 2 things:

1) My intended little nap when I reached home from work snowballed into full-blown sleep.

2) I haven't had my dinner.

But I'm not surprised. Usually on Mondays when I reach home from work, I'll shower & then crash for awhile, but often, I'll wake up in the middle of the night instead. I can get really tired on Mondays sometimes.

I love the night

Now stop calling me a child of darkness because I'm not into any of that satanic shit. I hate mornings & love the night because the night is cooler / colder & it's more romantic. It's also the time when your mind calms down from all the fast-paced poison accumulated during the day.

Stress ought to be officially classified medically as a slow, painful death, so you need to unwind & purge the poison from your system. This process has a name: Night.

Yes, yes, I also know about Beer.

Anyway, because I was attending to my customers throughout the afternoon, I chose to continue writing this blog after I get home since I'm so horribly longwinded & didn't want myself to get into the way of myself.

I visited the Pharmacist who is also a dear friend to me after all these years of working with her and our conversations about official work matters were interspersed with iPhone discussions as well as her sharing her personal life matters with me.

We had a long & deep conversation. Because I care about her situation, I did my best to help her think about possible solutions to certain things & situations. I appreciate it when my customers place trust in me regarding their situations.

2nd highlight of the day was when a friend told me about an offer. To cut a long story short, one of the reasons she told me to take on that challenging offer was because I'm a guy.

Now I appreciate an offer coming from a friend, but when the offer is challenging & Risky & the justification for taking it on is just because I'm a guy and that particular offer has nothing to do with gender as a prerequisite, it just serves to remind me about how some girls here try to play with the machismo of guys in order to get them to do their bidding.

It works this way: the girl places the guy in a position that reminds the guy about his primal need to prove his manliness to the girl. If he says no to the girl, thus displaying the lack of manly guts or incapability to the girl, he ends up feeling inadequate about himself. So Mr Caveman ends up forcing himself to do her bidding.

Screw machismo, just because I'm a guy doesn't mean that I shouldn't take calculated risks & just behave with brainless brawn. If she was trying to use this oldest girly trick in the book on me, she ought to be disappointed by now because I have no shame when it comes to my alarm bell ringing about the possibility of girls trying to manipulate me.

I'll only do things for girls gladly when they can treat me with the principle of not doing things to others that you yourself do not wish others to do to you.

But then again, there would be no policemen without criminals. On a similar vein, if there were no stupid men who value the need to prove how macho they can be over their own common sense and allowing women to manipulate them as a result, there wouldn't be women who are 'smart' enough to take advantage of men.

Some dead heroes also happen to be dead foolish heroes.

Seems like I'll need to help my friend understand me better so that she will not be disappointed again by trying to use her girly tricks & watching them rebound off my back into her face. But then again, why bother?

So this is how my Monday went. To summarize the whole day just in one sentence:

This tired Monday was quite a typical one: while working as I travel about visiting my customers, quirky things can just happen along the way.